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FBI Says It Will Hire No One Who Lies About Illegal Downloading
wabrandsma writes with this excerpt from The State Hornet, the student newspaper at Sacramento State On Monday, Sacramento State's Career Center welcomed the FBI for an informational on its paid internship program where applications are now being accepted. One of the highly discussed topics in the presentation was the list of potential traits that disqualify applicants. This list included failure to register with selective services, illegal drug use including steroids, criminal activity, default on student loans, falsifying information on an application and illegal downloading music, movies and books. FBI employee Steve Dupre explained how the FBI will ask people during interviews how many songs, movies and books they have downloaded because the FBI considers it to be stealing. During the first two phases of interviews, everything is recorded and then turned into a report. This report is then passed along to a polygraph technician to be used during the applicant's exam, which consists of a 55-page questionnaire. If an applicant is caught lying, they can no longer apply for an FBI agent position. (Left un-explored is whether polygraph testing is an effective way to catch lies.)
Then they won't hire you.
I found one weird trick to stream every GoT episode from bing videos - search for "game of thrones". Seriously. it's so stupid how MS is so viciously focused on licenses and piracy on one hand, but on the other hand in a mad scramble to catch up to youtube will stream all manner of ripped tv shows, movies and pr0n. It's a seriously sketchy place.
they will probably hire you. it's like a military security clearance. they don't like it when you lie to them, but they are OK if you admit wrongdoing.
If you use bittorrent, you are distributing while you download.
Depends on whether you mean the client called "bittorrent", or the BitTorrent protocol.
There's nothing in the protocol that says you "have to" upload in order to download. That's something that's built into most of the clients, on the reasoning that if nobody shares, there will be nothing to download.
I disagree: people have shown themselves to be willing to share things regardless of any such rules.
Further, the laws against "piracy", (which is NOT the same as downloading), were intended primarily to punish people who make bulk copies of copyrighted works and sell them for a profit. That's essentially what "copyright piracy" means. It's a legal term. And downloading doesn't qualify. Downloading isn't a "crime" at all. It's just a copyright violation. Piracy, on the other hand, is a crime.
Some of the biggest differences are:
[A] Almost all downloaders are doing it for personal use, not for profit. A reasonable penalty for that would be lost profits to the copyright holder (which is almost always far, far lower than the retail price), so for example copying a DVD might be a total loss of profits to the copyright holder of not more than about 50 cents. PLUS a "statutory penalty", which courts use to discourage such behavior. A rather large fine for creating a "loss of profit" of 50 cents might be 50 dollars... 100 times the actual damage.
[B] A very big problem with that is that studies have been showing for over 15 years now that in the vast majority of cases of downloading, there never would have been a sale (or rental) in the first place. So even 50 cents "damage" to the copyright holder as in [A] is more theoretical than actual. Further, downloaders give the actual product free word-of-mouth advertising, further mitigating any "damage".
It doesn't matter what the FBI "considers" downloading to be. THE LAW says it isn't a crime. And it sure as hell isn't "stealing". They are two very, very distinct areas of the law. When you steal from somebody, you deprive them of the use of the stolen item. When you copy a copyrighted work, you haven't deprived anyone of that work. Any "damage" is purely theoretical and must, logically, be tied to any lost profit from that particular copy.
Statutory damages that were originally intended for bulk, profitable piracy are not appropriate for individual downloaders. At all. That whole mess was nothing but "crony capitalism" at work. And lots of people have suffered a lot, as a result.
Further, the laws against "piracy", (which is NOT the same as downloading)
There are no laws against "piracy" per se; rather there are laws against copyright infringement, which downloading commonly is.
were intended primarily to punish people who make bulk copies of copyrighted works and sell them for a profit.
The statute doesn't require infringement en masse, nor does it require selling them for a profit. Perhaps you'd like to read it? It's 17 USC 501. It refers to other sections, in particular 17 USC 106, and 101.
That's essentially what "copyright piracy" means. It's a legal term.
No it's not. The correct legal term would be copyright infringement.
And downloading doesn't qualify. Downloading isn't a "crime" at all. It's just a copyright violation.
No, any copyright infringement which meets the prerequisites of 17 USC 506 is a crime. For example, if you willfully download a work in an infringing manner, and that work has a retail value of over $1,000 (easily doable with certain computer programs), that's a criminal infringement.
And it sure as hell isn't "stealing"
This is the first, and perhaps only thing in your post that's correct.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Was this new job as a professional Tone Troll? When the state has made legal whisteblowing impossible, the only way to reveal government lawbreaking is "illegally". Manning didn't exactly have his own staff to go over documents, but WikiLeaks did, going out of their way to as the USG for help with reactions.